Category Archives: Armory

Bitcoin Unlimited’s ghostly new asset BCU is already evaporating on the two exchanges hosting it, having reached an all-time low since its launch.

BCU Drops 30% in a Week

Its two trade venues, exchangesBitfinexandHitBTC, have both recorded falls in the price of the BCU token, with Bitfinex seeing a near 30% deterioration versus USD.

BCU is currently trading at $180 per coin, or 0.177 BTC, versus $254 and 0.254 BTC respectively seven days ago.

The underwhelming performance appears to have done little to alter the mindset of the Bitcoin scaling debate’s major parties, with Bitcoin Unlimited proponents dismissing Bitfinex’s trading pair when it launched.

With HitBTC now following suit, however, it appears the natural trend for BCU is down prior to its actual conception, which would only occur in the event of a hard fork March 31.

In ablog postover the weekend, HitBTC explained the reasoning behind adding the pair was to “provide [users] with the tools for avoiding any risk.”

The exchange has further blocked withdrawals until around 48 hours after the deadline, ostensibly to avoid exposure to replay attacks. Existing and future user balances are currently duplicated in BCU as well as BTC, effective immediately.

The move attracted criticism from Reddit commentators, along with the content of the blog post itself, which stated Bitcoin Unlimited pool support “could become the majority.”

Armory Signals Core Support

Bitcoin Core meanwhile has compiled alistof known companies and services which have signalled or are already preparing for Segregated Witness activation.

112 names from throughout cryptocurrency, including Coinbase and Armory in addition to Bitfinex, are currently registered.

Of the total, 57 are described as “Segwit ready,” 30 as being in a state of “work in progress” and the remaining 25 “planned.”

Armory itself released adedicated announcementon its Core adherence, stating it “does not support any controversial hard forks such as Bitcoin Unlimited and will continue to support Segregated Witness and Bitcoin Core.”

In the event BU becomes a bonafide chain, however, developer Andrew Chow said the service would be compatible.

“…The Armory wallet software does not perform any consensus checks as it relies on its connection to a local Bitcoin node. This node is typically Bitcoin Core, but anything based upon that will work as well; this includes Bitcoin Unlimited,” he said.

“Thus should a hard fork occur, […] Armory will be compatible with the hard fork and will allow users to continue to transact on the forked network.”

Chances of a hard fork actually occurring are at the same time themselves decreasing. Wang Chun, head of major mining pool F2pool, tweeted Monday that he – and therefore his pool – would not countenance such a change.

What do you think about BCU’s performance? Let us know in the comments below!

Armory Technologies Inc. will be changing leadership soon. This announcement was made on the bitcointalk.org forum today by Armory CEO Alan Reiner. Armory Technologies, founded in 2011 by Reiner, Developed the Armory wallet, an open-source bitcoin wallet with security features like multisig and cold storage very early in Bitcoin’s development. Other security implementations like PGP signing of their packages instead of using the less secure md5 hash system made Armory one of the most secure open-source bitcoin wallets available. Failure of their enterprise offerings has brought the company down, however.

Armory Mismanaged, Says Reiner

Reiner cites mismanagement and legal entanglements as the primary cause of this turn of events:

“Ultimately, Armory as a business was not managed well. We didn’t raise money when we should have, and the Bitcoin space was not ready for the tech we produced (rather, the business economics didn’t match up, yet). There hasn’t been much public activity from us, because we were primarily focused on building a suite of enterprise security tools out of public view. These tools were impressive, but most of our target market was still in the exploratory phase and interested in proof-of-concepts, not actually holding $500M. Not yet. We couldn’t make up for our missed opportunities to raise money to keep moving towards our vision.

Along the way, we accumulated a mess of legal and corporate complexity that has made it difficult to do anything constructive with Armory’s intellectual property. These complexities make it risky for me to continue development, even if the money was there to pay me a salary. It has also made it difficult to be acquired by another company that shares my vision, that could provide funding to see its execution.”

Wallet Development Continues

He also expresses relief to “return to the life of being a software guru.” stating his core competencies lie outside of business management. Luckily, the wallet remains available due to it’s open licensing, and according to Reiner, will have a member of the original team actively maintaining it:

“In the immediate future, Farhod (Goatpig) has indicated that he will take over the reigns of the public side of the Armory project.”

With the enterprise solutions and company supporting it undergoing changes, we may see development fall off regardless, depending on how the community transition is handled. Reiner leaves us with the possibility of a future revival, despite the setbacks that led to Armory Technologies’ current situation. Hopefully, the maintainer from Armory will expand the wallet software’s write access to the FOSS community. Otherwise the original specification will likely die. Of course, a community fork could always arise.

What are your thoughts on the problems at Armory Technologies? Let us know in the comments!